Leo Wrobel continues his series on preventing telephone system disasters from affecting you. Some sobering stories of real disasters at real phone companies ought to put you in the mood to take action.

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War Stories from the Front

Last month I began this series with some inexpensive steps you could take right now to prevent the phone
company’s disasters from becoming yours. This month I decided to try
something a little different. We’ll view the issue from the
perspective of the phone company. In the process, I’ll introduce some
"war stories" from actual events that have befallen real phone
companies. The names obviously have been deleted; however, the stories are true.
We’ll examine the disaster as presented virtually verbatim from the
firsthand account of the person(s) involved. Then we’ll consider what
preventive steps could have been taken to stop the disaster from happening in
the first place.

As you read, don’t automatically assume that these suggestions are
limited to phone companies. The same disasters could affect any organization,
and the same precautions are probably just as applicable to any company in order
to prevent such events.